Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas delivered a speech on Wednesday accusing Israel of “executing” a 13-year-old boy as Palestinian incitement continues unabated. The Palestinian boy, despite Abbas’s claim, is alive and will soon be discharged from an Israeli hospital, after attempting to kill two innocent Israelis. Ahmed Manasra and his cousin brutally stabbed an Israeli boy riding his bike, also age 13, and a 25-year-old man on Tuesday, seriously injuring both. Manasra landed in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital after being struck by a car while attempting to flee the scene. Abbas’s message accused Israel of “executing our boys in cold blood, as they did with the boy Ahmed Manasra and other children in Jerusalem and other places.” On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuted the lie telling journalists that “[w]e must tell the truth, that's the only way to fight this. We ask our friends to look at these facts, see the truth and not draw false symmetry between Israeli victims and Palestinian terrorists.”

Over the past few weeks, Israel has been experiencing a wave of terror with over 30 attacks that have resulted in the deaths of eight Israelis. Palestinian leaders have failed to condemn violence and continue to propagate spurious claims that Israel seeks to undermine the status quo at the Temple Mount. Last month, President Abbas said that Jews “have no right to desecrate” the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre “with their filthy feet.” Then on Palestinian television, he declared, “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem … With the help of Allah, every shaheed (martyr) will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.” As demonstrated in Abbas’s speech, Palestinians also promote the lie that Israel is executing innocent civilians. Last week, the Palestinian cabinet released a statement calling on Israeli leaders to be “held accountable for their decision to allow the occupation forces to kill and assassinate defenseless children and civilians, who have become a permanent target for acts of summary executions and cold-blooded murder.” Social networks are one of the primary avenues used to spread lies and incite violence: for instance, videos teaching Palestinians “how to stab” and graphics that glorify violence. On its Facebook page last week, President Abbas’s Fatah party posted an image with burning tires, a kufiya-clad youth throwing rocks, and a knife with the phrase “#third intifada.”

The government of Iran spent months brushing off inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency tasked with investigating Iran’s past nuclear work, and only began fully cooperating with them this week, The Wall Street Journalreported (Google link) Wednesday.

Iran’s behavior changed when “the IAEA and some Western governments directly warned Tehran that it must increase cooperation if it wanted IAEA board members to conclude it had sufficiently addressed their concerns,” the Journal reported.

Diplomats interviewed by the Journal said that they expected that the IAEA “would gain access to key sites, documents and people who had worked on Iran’s nuclear program.” But Iran has shared much less than what was hoped for. Documents provided to the IAEA in August contained little new information. Iran has held expert-level meetings with the IAEA for the past month, but sources described them as “unhelpful, with Iranian officials largely stonewalling on questions and claiming that IAEA evidence was forged.”

Today is the deadline for Iran to provide the IAEA with all relevant information to answer questions about its past nuclear work. Iran has supplied the IAEA with “more information and more access” in the past two weeks, a source told the Journal. But despite increased last-minute cooperation, it “remains unclear if Iran’s response will be enough to answer some long-standing questions” about its past nuclear weapons research.

Monday, October 19 is “Adoption Day,” which is 90 days after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution affirming the terms of the nuclear deal. This is when the European Union will announce the termination of its sanctions against Iran and the United States will end some sanctions and suspend others. (via TheTower.org)

Eran Baniel says his DouxMatok formulation could be a potent and sweet weapon in the war on diabetes and obesity. Unlike aspartame or saccharin, DouxMatok is not an artificial sweetener. Unlike agave nectar or stevia extract, it is not a sugar substitute either. This yet-to-be-commercialized Israeli product is a combination of natural sugars formulated to enhance the sweetness profile and lower the caloric load because less will taste like more. “What we developed is an approach that will allow us to reduce the use of sugars without affecting taste,” says DouxMatok founder Eran Baniel. “Taste is the reason people overconsume sugar and are complicating their health and wellness. They want the taste they like. What we try to do is to respect that and provide a taste they expect and are used to, while allowing them to achieve it with a reduced amount of sugars.” DouxMatok (a marriage of the French and Hebrew words for “sweet”) uses a proprietary technology to enhance the sweetness of a mixture of sucrose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup and the sugar alcohols maltitol, xylitol and erythritol. The compound has no aftertaste. The enhancement effect reportedly varies between 30 and 100 percent depending on whether it’s added to beverages, candies, dairy foods, baked products or other types of processed food or oral medications. That means it would be possible to provide the same sensation of sweetness with no more than one-third the usual amount of sugar, and possibly much less. Although DouxMatok is still a small startup, founded in 2014 in Petah Tikva, it has been enjoying a lot of attention since being chosen by an international industry panel as best company at AgriVest 2015 last April in Tel Aviv. The prize included $5,000 in consulting services from Ernst & Young. (via Israel21c)